First Newspapers, Radio then Television and now Social Media. This is the way Marketers are reaching their potential customers around the world and the coming ‘Era’ is of Online Advertising i.e. through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.

More and more businesses are jumping into social media as the ROI of Inbound Marketing continues to show that online tools like Twitter and Facebook are an effective - and inexpensive - way to reach potential buyers.

What Is Facebook?
Facebook is a social media platform for connecting people with those around them – friends, family, co-workers, or simply others with similar interests. Facebook started in 2004 as a closed community for college students (requiring users to sign up with a valid university email address) but has since expanded beyond that to high schools, corporations, regional networks, or any user across the world. Facebook allows users to connect and share information in a variety of ways. Facebook has over 250 million active users and that number continues to grow steadily. It is the third most trafficked website in the world (behind Google and Yahoo) and the most trafficked social media site in the world.

Business Goals for Using Facebook:

• Get found by people who are searching for your products or services
• Connect and engage with current and potential customers
• Create a community around your business
• Promote other content you create, including webinars, blog articles, or other resources

Tips for Reaching your Customers:

1. Manage Your Profile:

• Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.
• Establish a business account if you don’t already have one.
• Stay out of trouble by reading the Facebook rules regarding business accounts.
• Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your Facebook profile.
• Create friends lists such as “Work,” “Family” and “Limited Profile” for better control over your profile privacy.
• Post a professional photo or business logo to reinforce your brand.
• Post your newsletter subscription information and archives somewhere in your profile.

2. Connect and share with others

• Obtain a Facebook URL so that people can find you easily.
• Add your Facebook URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you.
• Post business updates on your wall. Focus on business activities, such as “Working on Product development strategy” etc.
• Share useful articles and links to presentation and valuable resources that interest customers to establish credibility.
• Combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.
• Upload your contacts from your email client to find more connections.
• Use Find Friends for suggestions of other people you may know to expand your network even further.
• Look for mutual contacts on your contacts’ friends’ lists.
• Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
• Market your products by posting discounts and package deals.
• Use Facebook Connect to add social networking features to your web site.
• Suggest Friends to clients and colleagues — by helping them, you establish trust.
• Buy Facebook ads to target your exact audience.

3. Use Network, Group and Fan Pages

• Start a group or fan page for product, brand or business. Unless you or your business is already a household name, a group is usually the better choice.
• Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information and newsletter archives.
• Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences and other programs where you or someone from your company will be present.
• Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions.
• Join network, industry and alumni groups related to your business.
• Use search to find groups and fan pages related to your business by industry, location and career.

Post tea, peppered with some avid networking, we gather for the next session, ‘Making SEO, PPC, SMM & Mobile Work Together’, presented by Mahesh Murthy, CEO Pinstorm and Paritosh Sharma, (SMM Evangelist, OMLogic). I am LIVE Blogging the session and I can’t help notice the excitement that has been generated in the room at the announcement of the session

Paritosh starts the session by explaining that he will be discussing his views about SMM and how business can benefit from SMM.He starts by displaying a slide with a picture of a colorful grocery store with blue and red boxes. I specially like the story telling method by which he makes his point. He says that once he went to buy a product of his favorite brand and that brand was not available so he had to settle down for his second favorite brand. So inspite of being a brand loyalist he had to settle with his second choice.

SMM can be explained in two words - message and media.

Paritosh makes the session very lively by citing an example of advertising for a bicycle manufacturer. He quotes 3 example campaigns 1. A description of the specifics of the bicycle 2. A picture of the bicycle 3. A video of a woman riding a cycle showing how easy to ride No need to mention the third method clicked. What really worked is the content, the message, and the media. He cites another example of the inventor of sliced bread. The person patented it, advertised it still it didn’t catch up for 15 years. Another bread manufacturer came along and packaged the sliced bread in the right manner and it appealed to the user. He rightly makes a point that there is no single rule for marketing. Advertising on SlideShare may work for a business and YouTube for another. It is important to understand the needs of the client and the client’s client. He is explaining that the way to go about it is to create a message and target it to the right set of consumers. He goes on to cite another example which triggers a lot of laughter - TataSky did an adult site, the moment anybody clicks on the site the questions like age and gender comes up which create the impression of the contents within. But the moment you click it it says ‘dude a paap hai’. The campaign sure has been done in a very witty manner which creates a huge recall value. He also cites the example of jagore.com and the ‘pappu pass ho gaya’ campaigns about which we all are well aware of. Both the campaigns and the were huge successes and the radio campaign ‘dot is hot’ was a runaway success as well. Jagore.com was a purely online site, and the message ‘chai peke jaago’ was very intelligently done. Kudos to the tata guys!

Television is a passe. There was a time people bought advertising space. But now people are spending more time on the internet on Orkuts and FaceBooks.

The audience silently agrees to that. Paritosh says that SMM is more about customizing, customizing according to the needs of the customers. He goes on to elaborate the four steps of creating a campaign.

The first step is to listen and learn. Even the customer is not clear about what he wants from SMM. The second step is to audit and analyze the customer’s business model, whether SMM will be good or PPC. The third step is to develop and test. The fourth step is to execute and monitor. Metrics are difficult in SMM. But it is not that difficult if you understand the business perspective of the client. And till the time there is no metrics, one can always customize metrics for the clients.

He adds

Position your brand right. Do it with the right medium and to the relevant section of the audience online.And thats where the PPC and SEO’s come into action.

He is now telling us about Skittles where every page is a social media, on one page there is twitter, on another youtube and FaceBook on yet another. There is nothing good or bad it is about. He then shares about Webchutney.com. On the home page, there are two tabs saying ‘I have 5 mins’ , and ‘I have plenty of time’, clicking on either takes the user to separate pages. He cites an example that if one sees a YouTube video of a bicycle gear that she likes and on clicking on it she is taken to the home page of the bicycle website, then one wouldn’t be too happy about it. The concept of separate landing works. I can’t help thinking that yes, that has happened to me many times! He makes a point by reiterating that markets have evolved overtime and its time that one starts marketing to the innovators and early adopters. They are the ones which will take to your product and will do a much better viral campaign on the internet rather than the late adopters.

You have a great product…. You have identified the target market… and people are talking about u….. and before the fizz goes out, market it…

Paritosh wraps up the session saying

The riskiest thing that you can do for your brand is to be safe.

Even if anybody writes anything bad about your brand, one can be alerted by a google alert and can pacify them. Thanks for the useful insights Paritosh, it was great listening to you.

Mahesh Murthy, starts by clarifying that he is not politically aligned and suggests an analysis of the BJP, Congress online campaign. It sure did trigger some muffled laughter among the audience. He says that analysis shows that the composition of the BJP was in the age groups of above 60 or 18-20. The composition of Congress was mostly the working class population. The focus of the BJP message was always a strong and decisive campaign and most working class do not see the current government as indecisive and weak. Mahesh says that he has worked with many media in his life. He says that one media does not necessarily kill another and that one should communicate with all the medias where consumers are listening. Interesting thought Mahesh! He then rightly points out that pace of change is increasing. He throws light upon the importance of integration of the media channels for advertising. He gives us the example of Coke which has a presence in over 20 countries and in all those 20 countries maybe there are 20 different media. Now, if there were specialized advertising agencies for each media and it would be very difficult for Coke to manage them. Rightly said Mahesh!

Mahesh says that every specialist becomes obsolete. Now however scary, this is a true. He says, TV became obsolete when internet came along and so on and so forth. So it is important not to stuck up in anything. He rightly points out that internet is a niche media and not a mass media but it sure does have the users with a purchasing power. He goes on by saying that before devising a digital marketing strategy one has to answer a few basic questions:

Where are my consumer? How many are on the digital medium and how much time do they spend on the digital medium. What is his behavior?

He says that there are 4 stages of marketing- Creating awareness- Generating interest- Generating desire and - ActionHe goes on saying that it is important to understand how does digital medium fits in any advertising campaign. It is important that a mix of media is used. He goes on sharing some great insights on the digital campaign- For awareness - CPI and not CPM, Contextual, Social, SEO, ORM- For generating interest - CPUV not CPC, Contextual, CPUV display, Mobile, ORM.- On increasing Desire - landing pages, microsites, CPQL, social, review sites and mobile web.- Action - CPLV/CPA, SMS, Call, Chat,Call centre, Analytics Mahesh goes on to share a very interesting example on how they increased the conversion rate for Yatra. If anybody searched for a Nagpur - Mumbai flight and for every travel site the user is taken to the home page where the user again has to enter the details. For Yatra, they created 15000 landing page, a separate landing page for Nagpur - Mumbai, a separate for Mumbai - Nagpur and so on. And surprise! their conversion rates went up by 70%. He gives another example of a bus service, Redbus - it increased sales many folds within 2 years ago. How did they do it - they advertised by integrating two medias - website and phone. He is making a very important point by saying

Focus on the audience and the message and not on the media.

He shares a quick case when they had to sell a student travel package for Jet Airlines with some benefits such as 10 kg extra luggage. They advertised this package on sites for overseas education. And everytime anybody asked a question on those sites, they answered it with links. No need to mention that sales picked up. Mahesh speaks about an occasion when they needed 2 interns, they twitterd about it and got 11 applications, without spending any money! The session is now going into Q&A mode.

One of the most interesting sessions I have blogged. Thanks Paritosh and Mahesh.

Kapil Gupta (CO. founder, OMLogic) the EMCEE for OMCAR 2009 now announces the much awaited session ‘Online Marketing : In-house or Outsource?’ by Gayatri Buddha (MakeMyTrip) and Pradeep Chopra (OMLogic) and I am LIVE Blogging the session. I can’t help noticing the enthusiasm generated at the announcement of the session.

Pradeep starts the session by thanking the audience for attending the event. He says that he will be touching upon which areas should be considered before anyone decides whether to inhouse or outsource the Online Marketing function.

He says that higher ranking does not necessarily mean more traffic. It is very important that to know who you need to reach out to. And more relevant traffic does not translate to more conversions.

He goes on to say that marketing and online marketing are still treated differently. He says that the ideal scenario is when online marketing should be a part of marketing. Online Marketing should be part of any company’s ongoing marketing strategy.

Pradeep is now citing an example of a Google ad of Whizlabs(a company that he founded), which helps prepare professionals for online certifications. He explains that any ad should provide the answers to some very fundamental questions which are discussed below, keeping the Google ad for Whizlabs as an example

The very relevant questions which are answered by the Google ad are

• What does the company offer? (Online certifications)
• What have they done so far? (since 2000, 1M+ users
• What is the credibility? (Factual details like 99% success rate)
• Will it be be valuable for me. (comprehensive report)
• Is there any call to action. Can I try it? (online mock test)

He cites this example to show that even if a page gets a lower ranking but it can get more conversions depending upon the relevancy of the ad.

Pradeep is also saying that the Online Marketing strategy actually depends on the business objective. It is very important to understand it as, if the clicks do not get converted then the whole exercise is futile. He adds that Social Media marketing can help in a brand being promoted. How much close you are to the customer can decide on conversions.

He now touches on how to decide whether to do Online Marketing in-house or outsource The reasons for doing it in house

1. Ownership and commitment - Of course nobody will be committed as one will be for your business. 2. Closest to the customer - Needless to say that only the company is the closest to its customers. 3. Organizational structural limitations. 4. Ultimate cost may be lower - It is possible that the cost is lower if done in-house. 5. Privacy of data and content.

The reasons for outsource Online Marketing

1. To learn from scratch - If anybody chooses to outsource Online Marketing then they will have to learn it. 2. The necessary tools - If the company has not indulged in Online Marketing in the past then it is unlikely that they will be having the necessary tools. There are high chances that the marketing agency will have the specialized tools. 3. Better Understanding - There is more probability that the marketing agency will have better understanding about the market. 4. Economical 5. The professional marketing agency (SEM service) will have good industry contacts and they are likely to get direct insights from Google. 6. Many times it is too complicated to track and measure in-house.

Pradeep says that which one to choose is a matter of choice as both are equally good.

Pradeep wraps up the session by saying the final words to consider for deciding whether to do Online Marketing In-house or to outsource it.

The company should analyze the commitment and passion to invest in

- people

- market

- technology

Thanks Pradeep for sharing the very useful and interesting insights.

Gayatri Buddha from Makemytrip starts the session by saying that though deciding whether to do Online Marketing In-house or Outsourcing it to an agency can be a tough decision, it can be made easy by keeping a few points under consideration.

She then proceeds to say that the fundamental question remains

What and when to outsource? The only thing that you cannot outsource is how much to spend, when to spend and where to spend.

Gayatri says that before deciding what functions to outsource, one should ask and answer a few questions like

• 1. Are you competent enough to understand the entire function.

Before outsourcing, it is very important that you understand your business objectives so that you are able to decide the right marketing strategy.

• 2. Speed to market.

If you want to market it fast then outsourcing is a good idea. She gives an example of her entrepreneur friend, since she is not in a desperate hurry to market, so she is learning the tricks and doing Online marketing herself.

• 3. Hiring talent is never going to be easy.

Gayatri claims that hiring and retaining the right talent can get difficult at times. An agency will have the necessary talent and will have more functional knowledge.

• 4. Resources in-house.

She says that Online Marketing is a specialised area, SEO is no more putting up some the keywords, it is much more complicated than that.

• 5. Cost benefit analysis -

The way to judge is if the benefit is short-term then it is better to outsource but in the long term it is better to do it in-house.

Gayatri is now suggesting a very interesting exercise. She says suppose you have outsourced the whole thing and now you want to bring it in-house, then you should go about it in the following order

1. SEO

2. Analytics

3. SEM

4. Creative design and development

5. SMM

6. Display advertising - not recommended to get this in-house at any time.

Gayatri is now suggesting some very important pointers which can make the decision making process simpler.

Analytics is complex area and availability of resource is scarce. If you are planning to do it yourself then it can be fun and easy at first but it is complex after a certain point of time. Suppose traffic is great, page views are high but conversions are not happening then you need to dig deep, then it becomes a real challenge.

She says that easiest and less complex ones are - SEO, SMM and PPC, one can do it at the base level as a lot of tools are available. But expert help can be needed at some points.

She also says that one should always outsource creative design and display advertisement. There are high chances that you will get it cheaper outside and if one has a strong guideline principle of ones’ design in place then it is always better to outsource it.

Gayatri is now exploring a very important issue. What is it that should one look out for while hiring an agency

1. It does not matter if the agency is big or small, what matters is if the agency is asking the right questions. If the agency is asking the right questions then there are high chances that they will provide the right answers.

2. Inability of the agency to translate your brief into action items - This can happen if the communication is not perfect. If there is a gap between your expectations and their understand, then these things are bound to happen.

3. Lack of clarity when setting measurable metrics - One should always demand measurable metrics from the agency.

4. Inaccuracy in cost and time estimations - One should be wary and on guard if the time and cost estimates provided by the agency are too way off mark.

She gives a very important suggestion of asking the agency for case studies. While one is asking for case studies then it is a good idea to ask for recent ones and also successful and unsuccessful ones.

She says it is also important that one discusses ROI with the agency as well as check their record of timely delivery.

After a great session, and sharing some real thoughts and insights into how can a business really decide upon either to create an In-house team or to Outsource the function, has now opened the session for Q and A, and as I sensed it, there already are hands up in the air, which Kapil Gupta is moderating. Thanks Gayatri, for such an amazing session!

TiE Delhi and OM Careers present The OMCAR 2009 - The Online Marketing Summit on May 23rd at Amity Innovation Incubator, Noida from 8:30 AM - 6:00 PM. OMCAR 2009, the Online Marketing Summit, is a non-profit initiative, which focuses on ‘empowering businesses to grow by leveraging the power of Online Marketing’. OMCAR 2009 will bring together online marketing professionals, sales & marketing people, advertisers & brand managers, entrepreneurs, CXOs of SMBs, web developers & designers and students under one roof to provide opportunities for networking, sharing of views and interacting with the experts from the Online Marketing industry.

OMCAR 2008

OMCAR is in its second year, with OMCAR 2008 being a huge success bringing together the best brains from the Online Marketing space at a single platform. The attendees were highly enthusiastic over the stimulating and inspiring discussions on online marketing careers including practical tips and guidance by leading online marketing experts, on building a successful career in online marketing.

The key speakers at OMCAR 2009 include Mahesh Murthy (CEO, Pinstorm), Vivek Bhargava (CEO, Communicate2), Pradeep Chopra (Co-founder, OMLogic) & Alok Mittal (General Partner, Canaan Partners). The major topics on which various thought leaders will provide insights and share their own practical experiences include ‘Reaching out to your customers cost effectively’, ‘Entrepreneurial opportunities in the Online World’, ‘Digital Media Integration - SEO, PPC, SMM & Mobile’ and ‘The Future of Internet Marketing’.

In addition, the summit will showcase 3 successful online marketing case studies on businesses that’ve effectively leveraged online marketing to grow. To add to the excitement, OMCAR 2009 will be blogged live by OMShare (the 1st from India, Online Events Promotion Platform).

“After the astounding success of OMCAR 2008, we are very proud to present OMCAR 2009. We are sure this event will be an enriching experience for anybody who is interested in or is already associated with online media and want to learn about, discuss and imbibe the latest online marketing techniques and strategies.” said Mr. Pradeep Chopra, Co founder & President, OM Careers.

Register now if you want to be part of this highly awaited online marketing event for 2009.

CPL Advertising Model- Get Cash Fast

Do advertisers believe CPC advertising?

Well CPC pricing model is not up to date to the current economic scenario. CPC pricing model got more strength during earlier recession (2000-2002). Advertiser thought of why to pay just for showing ads on websites and search engines. They opt for the option where their ads get clicked and they pay as low as minimum for the click. That time online advertising declined by 27 percent, CPC advertising grew by a staggering 820 percent. That shift has seen because the pricing model was changing from one form to another.

I think the cost per click is going to be disliked by the advertisers now. Advertisers finding more and more options where they pay only for targeted leads they are getting. There are various reasons where advertisers dislike CPC advertising model. I will discuss them one by one.

1. Competition in paid keywords: - Now the online domain is abundant. All type of advertisers is now online which include B to B and B to C advertisers. I think that the competition is direct and indirect so, the search engines are now getting costlier and in present economic scenario advertisers don’t want to pay high just for clicks on their ads. According to a recent survey by DoubleClick in 2007 the cost-per-keyword increased by 33 percent and the cost-per-click rose by as much as 55 percent. We at omcareers think that this increase recorded because the competition increased between advertisers and they are bidding more and more on paid listings in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN etc.

2. Not getting targeted clicks: - At the end of 2002, advertiser believes that the CPC model will work well as ads get clicked by genuine users and hence they will get more leads. But in 2008, according to Click Forensics shows a 16 percent industry click fraud rate. The same report claim that the click fraud on search engine content network like Google adSense and Yahoo Publisher Network have increased by 27.1% this year. Its true search engines use sophisticated technologies to check the click fraud and pay back to advertisers for click frauds. But in some case this is not that so easy and advertisers tired of paying for fraud clicks. They assumed of targeted clicks but they ended up paying for fraud clicks.

3. Paid search algorithms are not clear: - Search engines use a certain algorithms to decide the position on paid listing and CPC. Google, yahoo and ASK have their own algorithms to decide the position and CPC to pay by marketer.

The problem with these search engines is that the algorithms is not clear and its very difficult for a marketer to find our relation between quality score, landing page, keywords and ad copy.

One more thing which is very confusing for an advertiser is the source of click. Mainly in content network is hard to find exactly where the click coming from, however CRM tools help in this.

This type of lack in clarity leads to frustration and advertisers will opt out of this CPC pricing model.

To prevent this gap between advertisers need and the offering of search engines I think there is a requirement of check the loop holes of CPC advertising and encompass the news advertising model.

· Shift to CPL from CPC: - The last recession brings a new advertising model, CPC in front of advertisers. Its time to move on and to change the CPC pricing model to CPA pricing model. The move towards CPL advertising will give relief advertisers to pay for expensive keywords and fraud clicks. According to Daniel Taylor, senior analyst in Yankee Group’s Consumer Research groups “The industry is moving towards CPL advertising. CPC pricing model is a placeholder for CPL. Advertisers only want to pay for very specific consumer interactions, and not for wasted clicks or impressions”

· Business will be transparent: - The changed pricing model from CPC to CPL will definitely give a great visibility, transparency and satisfaction to the advertisers. Well now advertiser will now pay only for the relevant business (lead) he will get from search listings. This will develop a positive relationship between advertisers and advertising platform.

· Time to invest on CRM: - As now the more emphasis is on the lead and there is a need of deep level tracking of lead. The CRM tools will now be in demand. Marketers will now focus to a greater extent on the campaign backend to ensure that their marketing campaigns convert into tangible returns and revenue. According to Datamonitor, the CRM industry is forecast to reach $6.6 billon by year-end 2012, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.5 percent. This is because now more and more advertisers are demanding and focusing on lead and their tracking and measurability.

OMLogic is an Online Marketing Consulting and Outsourcing company, which helps organizations realize the full potential of Online Marketing in their businesses. OMLogic engagement with clients starts with helping companies ask and answer the right questions to identify the “right message” for their target customers. Followed by offering SEO and PPC promotional services to bring potential customers to the website and have them take desired actions.

All the members of OMLogic team are passionate about building online businesses. They are in the Online Marketing Domain from the very inception of Online Marketing in India and have built one of the leading online brands from India. OMLogic helps businesses harness the power of the Web in growing their reach or taking on bigger competitors.

Want to be part of passionate Online Marketers Team?

Job Description

OMLogic is looking for an experienced professional popularizing content over the web for our clients. The person will be responsible for populating the content to various online channels including Social Media websites and relevant blogs. OMLogic’s Account Managers and Business Consultants will provide understanding for identifying and submitting content of various online channels. The selected candidate will be play a key role in supporting the operations and maintaining timelines for taking OMLogic’s client’s message to market, at the right time. Key responsibilities are:

• Working with Account Managers to successfully extract and upload the required content
• Review the existing content of the client
• Creating requirements for content based on business understanding of the client

Desired Profile

Qualification:

• Graduate Degree with educational background in one or more of the following disciplines: English; Business

Experience:

• 0-2 years of work experience in Online Marketing/Marketing Communication
• Active in Social Media Communities: Orkut, FaceBook, Linkedin etc

Skills & Knowledge:

• Computer savvy and Good Typing Skills
• Ability to manage multiple tasks and assignments simultaneously
• Ability to work independently as well as in a team environment
• Good innovative thought process
• Process Oriented working attitude
• Passionate about internet

Please mail your resume with a cover note to careers@omlogic.com mentioning the job code in subject line.

Recession has hit shores! Well, I don’t mean to reframe Recession and what it does for you through this post. Infact this post is meant to give you a solution which would help you weather the storm.

If I ask you, is your business going down in the Economic Slowdown, well, a majority of the section of audience will have a common answer: YES!

The pinch of economic slowdown has slowly reached the world of internet marketing. There is drop in spends, advertisers are cutting down their PPC budgets. But don’t you think that when your business is not generating new business, it’s important to take a risk of PPC advertising, simply because you can reach a large number of target audience quickly and who knows you can bag a million dollar deal.

What is Effective PPC (Pay Per click)

Effective PPC consist of landing pages and ad copy that speaks to your customer’s needs. You need to continue testing your offers regardless of the economy to learn when your customer’s are purchasing your product for different benefits. Or, more importantly, when they stop engaging your product completely and it’s time to invent the new version. This is also very important because research has shown that last year has seen a 10% increase in people who research online before buying in the store.

But here the question arises that everyone talks about effective ppc campaign, but how to achieve it, so at OMLogic what we do is to first understand the business of our prospective client, because unless you understand the ground by digging inside the business you cannot reap the fruit. Understanding the business objective helps us to provide not only the effective PPC solutions but also help them in creating strategies to improve their offerings.

Conversion Optimization
In every other article or blog related to PPC it is said that “Always test your ad copy, landing pages, and keywords to maximize your business goals” and this statement hold all the essence of PPC marketing. The main reason behind this is it will help you to understand your customers and better you understand them more chances of higher conversions and steep increase in ROI. At OMLogic we ensure ads are tested regularly so that we can design perfect winning solutions for our customers.

Restrcitions

When nothing is going right you should be more careful when you want to show your ads. The Negative keywords come for rescue in this situation.

For Eg. If you do not offer any discounts or free shipping then use (discounts, free) as a negative keyword, this will help you in reducing cost and incurring irrelevant clicks.

Motivate Visitors to Take Action

When you are dealing with B2B clients, ensure that you are providing them all the relevant information at one place. Provide them assets like articles, whitepapers, demo and so on. This will help your visitors to take informed decisions. But do not confuse your visitors by providing all assets or multiple conversions actions in a single page. Test it carefully and regularly which action is working for you.
This is certainly not a guide which will help you to end the economic downtime but definitely by providing relevant information, optimizing your conversion funnel and motivating your visitors will help you to fight this gloomy situation. And finally respect your visitors because finally they are the people who will determine your success.

Post contributed by: Shushant Jha
PPC Expert at OMLogic
shushant.jha@omlogic.com

SearchCamp 2009 is a 2 day event aimed to bring together the best minds from the Search Engine Marketing to talk about search engine advertising, including optimization and marketing issues. The event is scheduled for the 28th February & 1st March 2009 at Chennai.

One of the exciting features of SearchCamp 2009 is ‘Careers in Search‘ sub-event. Targeted at Students and budding & current Search Engine Marketing professionals, this event is promised to be a wonderful eye opener to an exciting world of “Search Marketing”. The attendees of this event can expect to get answers to the following questions, which are relevant to building a successful career in the fast growing Search Engine Marketing industry:

• Why should students consider this as an “Career” option?
• What skills are required to create a career in Online Marketing?
• What kind of Job Profiles are available?
• How to select the Right Company?
• What are the Growth Prospects?
• It is long lasting or not?

This event will be hosted by Kapil Nakra, CEO of OMLogic Consulting (one of India’s leading Online Marketing companies). The basic event details are:

Day & Date : Saturday, 28th February 2009

Time : 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM

Registration Fee : Rs 100 (Students) - Rs 200 (Others)

Venue : Tidel Park, Chennai

Are you interested in building an exciting and successful career in Search Marketing? Or you may want to take you career to the new heights. Register NOW! For any suggestions or questions, please feel free to write to Kapil at kapil (dot) nakra (@) omlogic.com.

Well, I think this post has been in the waiting since a long time now. Most of the readers of the blog and some of my friends have pursued me to write this piece!!

Okay, so without any vague stuff, i would probably share the basic points every blogger must keep and take care of to increase the traffic!!

Increase TRAFFIC to your Blog

1. Concentrate on the topic… write posts that need to be read right now.
2. Talk like an expert (so you have to have enough knowledge about the subject you are writing about).
3. If you can break news nothing better!!
4. Start a topic which has not been started before by many (be amongst the first few) and let people discuss about it in their blogs/posts etc
5. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you
6. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
7. Don’t write about your wife, your boyfriend or your kids.
8. Write long, definitive posts.
9. Write neat things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
10. Share linklove and expect some back.
11. Include polls, meters and other eye candy.
12. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
13. Coin a term or two
14. Do email interviews with the well-known
15. Answer your email.
16. Use photos with right tags and names to them
17. Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit). Do it with every post.
18. Post your photos on flickr.
19. Share your blog posts links over Twitter
20. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS.
21. Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
22. Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
23. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
24. Refer to useful but little-known resources.
25. Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers–like gadgets and web 2.0.
26. Write about Google.
27. Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
28. Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
29. Keep tweaking your template to make it include all the nice stuff that would make it easier for people to share and take you further!!
30. Write about blogging.
31. Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
32. Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.
33. Post on weekdays, because there are more readers.
34. Write about a whole gamut of different topics so you don’t bore your readers.
35. Post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.
36. Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
37. Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger.
38. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention
39. Be patient
40. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful
41. Write about events
42. Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive
43. Write about stuff that attracts a community. You will instantly find a large number of visitors there
44. Don’t be boring.

Finally write stuff that people want to “Read and Share”

Social Media cloud

Social Media, blogs, twitter, mashups….the year 2008 has been all action and Action and more INNOVATIVE Action!!

Things have changed in a way which have certainly created new offerings, newer business models, personal branding are amongst the BUZZzzzz today!

Great is we have all this!! Let me now come straight to the point!

1. There are Social Mediums
   • Blogs
   • Slideshare
   • YouTube
   • Ning
   • LinkedIn
   • Twitter
2. There is content
   • There are videos
   • There are presentations

There is all this and MORE. Things have moved really fast in the past year. 2008 has been an year full of action, the coming year 2009, is according to me the ‘Year of Consolidation‘!!

YES! I have met so many people both online and offline saying that lets connect here, lets connect there. but what happens post connecting! There have been great stories of people making lots of money on the Social platforms. We are all amazed at how one can be a millionaire on YouTube!!

So I have put on my thinking hats!!

The question now is what NEXT? After you have been bombarded with content all around, you have flying social media tags and clouds, how do you recognize the silver lining within?

Where does all this content lead to? Isnt’ it leading to finding the needle from the hay? Isnt’ it all becoming too much?

Well, I would say YES and NO!

2009 would be the year of Consolidation!!

Yes you have it! With economies all around in bad shape, I feel there would definitely be some more innovations around which would follow on from 2008. But the year would sound and spell CONSOLIDATION.

I know of people across the globe through a popular professional social networking channel, who are doing probably the similar work as many of their counterparts in India (like us). And all these people are looking towards gaining the first movers advantage in defining a solid offering into Social Media.

The question I ask are:

1. How do you assess the worth of a Social Media channel for your clients
   • On the basis of clients’ business
     • Do you have statistics to prove why would a channel work in a certain case and why not in the other?
   • On the basis of the Social Media channel
     • How do you justify a Social Media channel as being more for a client and less for the other
2. How do you measure the success factors of your implementation of the Social Media for the client?
3. Apart from Branding and Messaging and Communication what else do you provide to the client?

These are a few of the list of questions I have on the Social Media consolidation front. And I feel its the time to answer these questions to stand apart and be able to “Find the needle for your clients, from the stack”!!

Happy Socializing and my wishes to all Social Animals on this new year!

Best,

Paritosh Sharma